most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

lego star wars comic thing

hello there

well, this blog post pretty much does what it says in the title, look you see. to that end, for those of you looking for an at a glance, sorry i am in a rush sort of mind, i have purchased what i think is edition two of Disney's latest effort to claw back the money they spent on that poor man's version of Police Academy, namely Star Wars. here is the constructed, armed and fully operational (kind of) Slave One lego toy that came with it; yes the sole motivator for purchase.

the 50p coin is indeed, as those of you most astute will have clocked, there purely for scale and is not either an item you get with it or a suggestion of some form of cost vs value ratio.

if you are still reading, you are probably not in so much of a rush, so let's bid farewell to those that had a glance and left and press on with some more details.

this is, as i am pretty sure i mentioned above, edition two as far as i know. issue 2 if you like, i guess. i was aware of the first one, but i didn't buy it. that had a lego x-wing with it. the x-wing, as we know, is intrinsically, if not closely, linked to that nancy boy Luke Skywalker, and i want nothing to do with him or his fancy new beard, thanks.

Luke Skywalker, you see, appeals to an entirely different demographic than what i fall into. Luke is designed to appeal - and does so very successfully - to those who mope around, having not so much friends as they do acquaintances that stick about so that they may look momentarily cooler by comparison, relying entirely on computerised machines for conversation and once got very close to having sex by some accidental fluke involving a botched rescue, some snow and a relative.

it can be said, then, that Luke exists to give people of a similar lifestyle something to aspire to. Luke is onscreen so that these people may look at him and say "hey, maybe i am also the chosen one like Luke, and my father is also really an intergalactic warlord that will one day find me despite not looking up my surname or having a check out of his old home planet on the off chance that i might be here waiting for him". a prototype of Neo out of Matrix, i suppose.

Slave 1, confusingly called Slave One on the packet that came with the magazine, is of course very different. here we are talking about a spaceship that was once owned by Jango Fett, who was cool, and was then owned by Boba Fett, who was or is even cooler.

is this lego model of Slave 1 any good, then? well, it depends entirely on what you are expecting for something in a bank bag sized packet stuck on a magazine which is sold for £3.99. in context, it is pretty good value, but it's not exactly a spectacular lego creation. but let's have a look at the context.

lego, as any parent or rabid fanboy will testify, is not cheap. the most basic of construction kits of it, featuring a simple car or similar, are usually around £5. the "lego minifigures", in which you buy a single lego character with one or two accessories, are usually £2.50. to get a branded, licensed official lego Star Wars product and magazine for just a penny below £4 is then good. and, in fairness, so far Disney have been pretty good with Star Wars pricing - flood and be proliferate across the market seems to be their approach.

a look at the bits inside the packet, so you may weigh up the value? certainly. there's a dozen or so parts; one of them was "missing" when i took this image as it was stick to the seal on the packet and i had not noticed until we got to that stage of building.

it's no-nonsense, legit and proper lego pieces, as in this is not some random bits off the floor of the massive lego factory in Denmark (or wherever), and if they sold this without the comic the pricing would probably be on or around what i paid anyway.

the comic itself? looks decent enough. it features, as you would expect, adverts for other Disney related concerns, in particular all of that Avengers business, which was their biggest cash cow until coins of money were exchanged for Star Wars. and may both be a success for them, which in regards of Avengers has certainly been the case so far.

as well as adverts, the comic features a story or two, some puzzles and a "fact file" for some recently made up Star Wars character rather than one of the traditional, well established made up ones. there's also some boss postcards to cut out and send on the back cover. here they are in Commodore 64 mode.

the stories actually look like they are fun, which isn't really a surprise. the lego Star Wars films have so far been wildly funny and very entertaining, and no i do not care that they "play with the (groan) canon history of the films". there's also a competition in the comic, one which sees you needing to draw a Stormtrooper so that you may win either a lego imperial shuttle or lego naboo starfighter. it might well let the boys draw it for me, or i may well do it myself - let us be honest, i am not going to be the only 42 year old entering.

back to the lego set - and let us not forget that Slave 1 was the selling point for me and will be for many other purchasers.

is it fairly easy to build? partially. i mean, as you can see here (sorry, Disney, if i was not supposed to put the whole page up), it's built in "four easy steps". this is, of course, classic lego logic, though, and it is four easy steps if you combine several stages of construction into one. what exactly the problem is with lego and odd numbers i do not know; perhaps it is a Danish thing.

did i build it all by myself, unsupervised and trusted not to either eat any of the parts of stick then in a suitable or unsuitable orifice in my body? of course not. to give it a full test i handed it all over to our resident lego and construction lover William.

he is, as those who know me or read here regularly enough, aged 5. he could handle following the instructions and assembling Slave 1 with the greatest of ease, as you can see in the picture which commenced this blog post, and in just a little while from now in the image that will bring closure to this post.

there's even some functionality to the Slave 1 lego model, in so much as it is not stagnant. as you can see between the pictures, the wing flap thingies are able to rotate, just like on the (ahem) "real" Slave 1. that they look absolutely nothing like the wing flap thingies on the actual Slave 1 is neither here nor there, and to highlight it is just nitpicking.

the finished Slave 1 again, then, with the 50p coin once more being present to give you some sort of scale idea. if, of course, you have any sort of idea how big a 50p coin of money is.

will i be purchasing the third issue? William is keen, but i am not too sure. the lego that comes with it is something called an "imperial shooter", and it looks rather dull.

anyway, i can but hope that this blog post has helped you know what goes on in this new lego Star Wars comic, and indeed has reaffirmed what you knew already of Luke and his fans.